AI Data Lead

Summary

Join Clarifai as an AI Data Lead and own the end-to-end process of creating and curating high-quality datasets for our AI models. You will be a power user of Clarifai's data labeling products, providing feedback to improve them. Initially, focus will be on building next-generation vision datasets, particularly full-motion video, expanding later to language datasets for NLP models. Collaborate with ML and product teams, design data acquisition strategies, build and maintain data pipelines, and manage third-party labeling vendors. Implement a QA framework, act as a key internal customer for Clarifai's products, and mentor data labeling partners. Foster a culture of data excellence and communicate effectively with stakeholders.

Requirements

• 3+ years in data engineering, with a proven history of building and managing complex data pipelines
• Direct, hands-on experience managing third-party data labeling services or in-house annotation teams
• Experience working with large-scale vision datasets (image or video)
• Deep understanding of data labeling processes and quality metrics
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL
• Experience with cloud data services (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• Exceptional project management, communication, and vendor management skills
• A meticulous eye for detail and an unwavering commitment to data quality

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with ML and product teams to define data requirements, starting with complex video and image use cases and expanding into text and language
• Design and execute a comprehensive strategy for data acquisition and augmentation
• Build, scale, and maintain robust data pipelines to ingest, process, and version large-scale multimedia datasets
• Leverage Clarifai's automated and AI-assisted labeling tools to efficiently pre-label data and manage human-in-the-loop workflows
• Serve as the primary lead for external data labeling vendors who will often verify or enrich AI-generated labels, ensuring projects are on time and within budget
• Author crystal-clear labeling instructions for complex tasks, from object tracking in video to, eventually, named entity recognition in text
• Implement and manage a rigorous quality assurance (QA) framework for both AI- and human-generated labels
• Act as a key internal customer for Clarifai's data labeling products
• Provide structured, expert feedback to our product and engineering teams to identify bugs, suggest feature enhancements, and guide the product roadmap
• Continuously evaluate and pioneer new strategies for combining automated labeling with human verification to maximize quality and efficiency
• Lead and mentor a focused set of data labeling partners
• Foster a culture of data excellence, ownership, and continuous improvement
• Communicate project status, challenges, and outcomes effectively to all stakeholders. Keep track of budgets

Preferred Qualifications

• Specific experience with the complexities of full-motion video datasets and annotation (e.g., temporal consistency, event tagging)
• Experience in an environment where you regularly used internal tools and provided feedback for their improvement ("dogfooding")
• Experience with large-scale language or text datasets
• Previous experience in a technical leadership or mentorship role
• Experience using a variety of data annotation platforms and tools